Patience And Wealth

Walter Mischel’s marshmallow test is one of the best-known studies in the history of psychology. In the 1960s, Mischel, then a professor at Stanford, took nursery-school students, put them in a room one-by-one, and gave them a treat (they could choose a cookie, a pretzel stick, or a marshmallow) and the following deal: They could eat the treat right away, or wait 15 minutes until the experimenter returned. If they waited, they would get an extra treat. Tracking the kids over time, Mischel found that the ability to hold out in this seemingly trivial exercise had real and profound consequences. As they matured and became adults, the kids who had shown the ability to wait got better grades, were healthier, enjoyed greater professional success, and proved better at staying in relationships—even decades after they took the test. They were, in short, better at life.

Mischel’s work has been enormously influential, making its way into popular culture in a way that few academic studies have. It has changed the way educators and psychologists think about success: The lesson is that it’s not just intelligence that matters, but self-control and patience and being able to tame one’s impulses—from the desire to eat the marshmallow to the desire to blow off an exam or have an affair.

A new study, however, suggests that we may be taking, at best, an incomplete lesson from Mischel’s work. Celeste Kidd, a cognitive science graduate student at the University of Rochester, is the lead author on the paper. When she was younger, Kidd spent some time working in shelters for homeless families. She began to wonder how growing up in such a setting, full of change and uncertainty, might shape the way kids responded to the sort of situation Mischel’s study presented. She wanted to test whether those kids would eat the marshmallow right away,not because they were weak-willed, but because very little in their upbringing had given them much reason to believe that adults would do what they said they would.

Kidd’s own version of the marshmallow study was designed to test the effect of trust. First, the three- to five-year-olds in the study were primed to think of the researchers as either reliable or unreliable. In the first part of the study, the researchers handed over a piece of paper and a jar of used crayons, then told a child to either use those crayons or wait for a better set of art supplies. In the second part of the study, the experimenter gave the child a small sticker and told the young subject to either use that one or wait for bigger, better stickers. For half the kids, the experimenter kept the bargain, returning with a loaded tray of markers, crayons, and colored pencils, then several big stickers. For the other half, the experimenter returned a few minutes later to say, apologetically, that there weren’t in fact any better art supplies or any better stickers.After this, the kids were given the marshmallow test. The results were dramatic: Nine out of the 14 kids in the reliable condition held out 15 minutes for a second marshmallow, while only one of the 14 in the unreliable condition did. If kids were unsure they were going to get a second marshmallow, they didn’t bother to wait.

Influenced by Mischel’s work many people believe that delayed gratification is the way to achieve great wealth.After all didn’t Warren Buffet with his favourite waiting period of forever become rich by cultivating patience?Here is what modern psychology has to suggest:The ability to delay gratification might get us a long way in life and help us build wealth as long as we live in a stable and predictable economic system where following the rules gets us rewarded.However we each have to temper our patience with an understanding of who or what to trust and how much.Remember Warren Buffet places a high value on the integrity of the people he deals with.

10 Responses to Patience And Wealth

Well, I’d say that our entire Western environmental, economic and societal sustainability crisis is created by the drive to instant gratification. People want to consume now and pay little attention to the long term effects on our environment, our economy and our society or even to their own long term health, wealth and happiness. It really is quite startling how primitive our mindset still is in this modern day and age, but that seems to be the reality we have to deal with.

Yes you have a valid point.When it comes to consumption,the West has many avenues for instant gratification.But on the other hand ,the well developed financial services industry in these countries encourages a lot of people to give up responsibility for their financial situation.The idea is turn over your money to some one else and ask no questions and trust to the long term blindly.The idea is that time in the market is of paramount importance.However sometimes the capital loss might be so severe as to make trusting to the long term stupid.

I have always thought that determining the future of a child based on a simplistic marshmallow test was stretching credibility. A child may do X one day, has a few life experiences, then do Y when tested another day.

But how can we avoid others in the process of building wealth?Eg. even in as small an activity as buying government bonds the interest rates will be influenced by the people in charge of the monetary policy.Or if we choose to buy corporate debt or stocks we will have to deal with the people who run the company in question.

It seems like one of the most important factors, as you pointed out, is the who or what to trust. In real life, much of the success achieved from delayed gratification comes from our own ability to deliver.